About

About Me

I’m Stephen Rhoton, a Principal Platform Architect and technology leader with extensive experience in cloud architecture, DevOps, and enterprise infrastructure.

Professional Experience

NetDocuments — Principal Platform Architect, Manager, Infrastructure

MARCH 2024 - PRESENT

As Principal Architect, I’m guiding an on-premises migration to AWS for a multi-billion item document store and associated web services. My responsibilities include:

  • Designing and managing observability implementation for all AWS services
  • Implementing DevOps pipeline for AWS and AWS GovCloud blue/green deployments
  • Writing and guiding security implementation for AWS migration

Dealerware — Principal Platform Architect, Manager, Data And Platform

DECEMBER 2022 - MARCH 2024

Led the architectural transformation of a Rails monolith to an event-driven Kafka-based service architecture. Key accomplishments:

  • Redesigned and managed DevOps and CI/CD platform to be developer-driven and self-service
  • Rebuilt integrated Data Platform using AWS DMS, Glue, S3, and Snowflake
  • Introduced MLOps AI (LLMs) to automate IaC and CI/CD deployments
  • Built LLM POC for telemetry data with AWS Bedrock

TeleTracking — Infrastructure Architect

APRIL 2022 - DECEMBER 2022

Designed and implemented new EKS infrastructure using AWS Blueprints and Terraform, with focus on:

  • Developing advanced RBAC into EKS clusters using AWS SSO integration
  • Building custom ECS multi-account SaaS infrastructure
  • Contributing to the terraform-aws-eks-blueprints project

Previous Roles

  • Life360 — Senior Manager, Tools and Infrastructure (2022)
  • Zoll Lifevest — Manager, Software Operations (2019-2021)
  • Crown Castle — Applications Architect (2019)
  • PNC — VP Senior Applications Architect, Retail Applications (2018)
  • Carnegie Mellon University — Enterprise Cloud Architect and Senior Manager, Network Development (2007-2018)

Skills & Expertise

  • Cloud Architecture (AWS, Kubernetes, Containers)
  • DevOps & CI/CD Implementation
  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
  • Microservices & Event-Driven Architecture
  • Data Platform Engineering
  • MLOps & AI Integration
  • Software Development (Ruby, JS, Python, Perl)
  • Budgetary Planning & Team Management

Presentations & Awards

  • Infrastructure As Code, And Why It Matters (CMU, 2017)
  • Container Deployments: Real World Stories with Our Customers [CNA1766PU] (VMWorld, 2017)
  • Containing the (Undead) Applications (CMU, 2016)
  • Andy Award - Outstanding Innovator (2010)

I’m passionate about leveraging modern cloud technologies to solve complex business problems and build scalable, resilient systems. This website serves as a platform to share my thoughts and experiences in the world of cloud architecture and technology leadership.